our own evil, lowly penitence before God, and glad
assurance of free and full forgiveness.

Then note, still further, how that which is pronounced blessed is not
the realisation of a desire, but the desire itself. And that is so, not
only because, as I said, all noble aspiration is good, fulfilled or
unfulfilled, and aim is of more importance than achievement, and what a
man strongly wishes is often the revelation of his deepest self, and the
prophecy of what he will be; but Christ puts the _desire_ for a certain
quality here as in line with the _possession_ of a number of other
qualities attained, because He would hint to us that such a
righteousness as shall satisfy the immortal hunger and thirst of our
souls is one to be received in answer to longing, and not to be
manufactured by our own efforts.

It is a gift; and the condition of receiving the gift is to wish it
honestly, earnestly, deeply, continually. The Psalmist had a glimpse of
the same truth when he crowned his description of the man who was fit to
ascend the hill of the Lord, and to stand in His holy place, with, 'he
shall _receive_ the blessing from the Lord, and _righteousness_ from the
God of his salvation.'

Of course, in saying that the first step towards the possession of this
divinely bestowed and divinely blessed righteousness is not effort but
longing, I do not forget that the retention of it, and the working of it
into our characters, and out in our conduct, must be the result of our
own continual diligence. But it is effort based on faith; and it is
mainly, as I believe, the effort to keep open the line of communication
between us and God, the great Giver, which ensures our possession of
this gift of God. Dear friends, the righteousness that avails for us is
not of our making, but of God's giving, through Jesus Christ.

So, before I pass to the other thoughts of my text, may I pause here for
a moment? 'Blessed are they that hunger and thirst'--think of the
picture that that suggests--the ravenous desire of a starving man, the
almost fierce longing of a parched throat. Is that a picture of the
intensity, of the depth, of our desires to be good? Do we professing
Christian men and women long to be delivered from our evils and to be
clothed in righteousness, with an honesty and an earnestness and a
continuity of longing which would make such words as these of my text
anything else, if applied to us, than the bitterest irony? Oh, one looks
out ov